Apologising for Slavery

During the Prime Minister's Questions on the 26th April 2023, Ms Ribeiro-Addy asked for the UK government to apologise for the 'country's role in slavery and colonialism.'

Mr Sunak refused. Instead, he said we should understand 'our history and all its parts, not [run] away from it... [T]rying to unpick our history is not the right way forward.'

But this explanation doesn't match the refusal. To fully understand our history, we have to acknowledge what happened rather than run away from that truth. 

     An apology for slavery acknowledges it happened. An apology for slavery shows we understand our history and that we run towards the truth. 

     Refusing to apologise is simply ignoring slavery happened. That is, it's trying to unpick it from our history.

So Sunak's explanation for refuting the apology is actually the very reason to give the apology.

Critique: The Fire Eternal (Chris D’Lacey)

Five years after the events of the first book, Zanna and David’s child Alexa is introduced.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

As always the author gave us plenty to laugh about. But it does seem like he’s trading humour for world-building.

Tam says he has a long life line and Zanna says, ‘It might shorten if you don’t let me concentrate.’

Tam makes Zanna’s face twitch then he says, ‘Sorry, I think I might have amused you.’

Alexa calls polar bears ‘boley pears’ which is the cutest thing I’ve ever read. Plus she calls the tv the ‘tellingvision’.

Gwilanna tottering around in her ice cube is hilarious.

 

After an absence in the previous book, we get good descriptions.

The fairy door in the garden opens with a crack of light and a hazy ripple that show the ‘shift in the fabric of the universe.’

Dragons ‘mirror’ the Earth, having ‘a body of clay, a heart of fire’.

When Golly animated Gawain’s eye, it’s described in a really gross way. Excellent.

 

There were a few writing errors.

In a couple of chapters, the point-of-view character changes many times in quick succession which is bad writing.

Prem:Ix are the Ix version of Pre:men. Surely the colon in both words would be in the same place? It makes no sense for them to be in different positions.

In the middle of a sentence, it says, ‘The Fire Eternal’ but the ‘The’ shouldn’t have a capital.

When making darklings, it says ‘It took as long as it took.’ What a pointless sentence.

 

With heavier and heavier world-building, there are a few things of note that need to be kept in mind.

            Gwilanna’s mother was a Premen. This is the source of Gwilanna’s longevity and magic. Her mother was meant to be illumed with the dragon Ghislaine and this unfairness seems to drive Gwilanna.

            With each Premen generation, the Fain and human were finding it harder to un-commingle. This made both humans and Fain (these called Ix) more aggressive. The Ix are threatened by dragons.

The Prem: Ix force Lucy to make darklings, gargoyle-like creatures that are the opposite of dragons.

Gwillan creied his fire tear because he thought Liz died and it landed in the obsidian knife, creating dark fire. Gwilanna takes it.

 

There are many cases of things being said or done that don’t quite add up.

The group had left for the Arctic in November and David ‘disappeared’ in February. The trip was only for twelve weeks so unless they left at the end of November and he ‘disappeared’ at the start of February, this timescale isn’t feasible.

When Zanna says she wants to run a ‘new agey’ shop, Lucy says, ‘at least it’s not you hippie veggie stuff’. But ‘hippie’ and ‘veggie’ are two words that describe ‘new age’ really well.

Tam talks about Diana from Greek myth. But Diana is the Roman name for the Greek god Athena.

It says that there is ‘common ancestry’ in the lineages of Groyne and the Pennykettle dragons. Groyne is a narwhal tusk and the dragons are made from clay. Where is the common ancestry? The only explanation I can come up with is having the auma of actual dragons, maybe Gaia, but this is tenuous.

Henry calls fairies ‘diminutive dryads’. Sigh. Dryads are nymphs of oak trees. Fairies and nymphs aren’t the same thing so dryads can’t be, either.

It describes Premen as human-Fain hybrids. Hybrids are children of two separate species. Premen are humans with Fains inside them so that’s hardly a hybrid.

Lucy and Tam go to David’s previous address before he moved to Wayward Crescent but it doesn’t exist! We saw David in book two pick up a letter from his parents so where did that come from if they don’t exist?

Arthur thinks, for no apparent reason, that Alexa (pre-birth) sent Gawain’s claw to Arthur during Arthur’s monk years. We find out in the final book this is true but Arthur really has no reason to think this.

The Ix want to kill Alexa so that David’s sadness will multiply in the human collective, creating dark fire for the darklings. Why would David’s sadness for his murdered child be multiplied in the human collective but other parents losing their kids don’t?

 

Those weren’t the only problems, however.

Alexa pronounces Gruffen’s name as ‘Ruffen’. Zanna says it the right way and the prose says, ‘pronouncing his name correctly this time.’ Um, yeah, we figured that one out.

Thoran and Ingavar, the polar bears from the last book, fuse into one being. this polar bear doesn’t have two characters inside so it seems they were fused simply for convenience rather than for the plot. Then it’s revealed that Ingavar and David are one!

It’s very convenient that Gretel gives Groyne flowers for understanding accents just when he needed them. There was no reason for Gretel to expect Groyne would encounter someone with a weird accent.

For Fain to know themselves completely, they need to ‘experience creation in a physical state.’ That is, they need to mate. But this doesn’t follow.

Tam, twenty-five, tells Lucy, sixteen, that she’s a ‘good-looking kid.’ Vomit. Yes she’s reached the age of consent but she’s still legally a child. Then they kiss later! Double vomit.

There are questions that remain unanswered for the entire series. They’re quite important to the plot so having them unjustified is undesirable. When Premen failed to un-commingle, both humanity and Ix became aggressive. But why? Lucy’s phone becomes a portal to take her to Farlowe Island. How exactly? It says, ‘This was the End of Days.’ Um, why?

 

Many of the political themes spoken about in this book are very relevant today. Indeed, you could read this book and think that it was written really recently.

Talking about climate change, it’s mentioned, ‘we all seem to care but we don’t know what to do.’ I think this perfectly sums up people’s predicament.

Jodie and Tam have a conversation that I’ve had with so many people. Jodie says the ‘temperature of the Earth has always fluctuated. It goes through natural cycles.’ Then Tam replies, ‘It’s the rate of acceleration that matters.’

The author talks about disinformation and how politicians spin the facts for their own purpose.’ Then we get, ‘When the populous is confused, our leaders are well and truly in command.’

 

This was an interesting book with interesting world-building. But it’s in this book that it becomes complex. Maybe too complex for the intended audience (it’s still marketed for children rather than teens). Not only have the characters aged but so has the readership.

 

Critique: Fire Star (Chris D’Lacey)

David is in the Arctic studying. This book is the start of the environmental aspects of the books. It’s not preachy and the information is worked to be appropriate and understandable for the intended audience.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There are many details necessary to the plot.

The story starts with the polar bear Ingavar who meets an old bear called Thoran.

Dr Bergstrom’s tornaq becomes Groyne (lol), a bird-like dragon.

The three-lined mark is named after Oomara, an Inuit persuaded by a shaman to strike a bear. It’s heavily implied this shaman was Gwilanna.

Lucy can’t do magic because she is of Guinevere’s line with too little of Gwendolen. Zanna is of Gwendolen’s line though as she’s natural born (has a father) Gwilanna’s surprised Zanna has powers.

Zanna speaks dragontongue with an Inuit shaman who knows it as the sacred Inuit language. So when Gwendolen had children with the Inuit, her knowledge of dragontongue was adopted by the shamans.

The transdimensional Fain wanted to use Earth as a hatching ground for the dragons (which they revered). Fain were on Earth at the dawn of Homo sapiens. The link between the Fain’s home and Earth broke, leaving many Fain like Gwilanna stranded. When a Fain enters a being, it is known as ‘commingling’. A group of bad Fain want all dragons to die.

The bad Fain pierce David’s heart with a spear of ice. This means icefire goes straight for David’s heart. This is only relevant in this book because it’s David death but the implications are far-reaching for later in the series.

Arthur had dark hair, blue eyes and was ‘Handsome in a bookish kind of way – like you.’ This is a link to the idea that David should have been Arthur and Liz’s child, as seen later in the series.

 

The humour was brilliant as always.

            Russ wears a cowboy hat. The idea of a cowboy (people who usually live in hot places) in the Arctic tickles me pink.

            David goes bright red because Russ walks in on him snogging Zanna. For a twenty year-old that’s rather sweet.

Henry says God created everything. When David asks, ‘Even me?’ Henry says, ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Liz asks if the bump is hideous. David response? ‘Compared to a rhino? No.’ Golden.

 

There were a few writing mistakes.

David quotes a line from his story but quotation marks aren’t used.

Early in the book, dragons speak in italics but from page 123 onwards, dragons speak with speech marks. This lacks consistency. It’s particularly obvious in one chapter where Gadzooks switches between italics and speech marks.

About Got, David asks if Henry ‘believes in him.’ Should be ‘Him’.

At the end of one chapter, it says that Liz will tell David the meaning of the name ‘Arthur’. But then she explains in the very next chapter so this was pointless.

Three months pass in the space of three and a bit pages. If it was so important for the start of the story to be when it was and for the end events to be when they are, at least do something in that time span. At least do something with that time span. Otherwise shorten the gap.

There was one hundred and four pages of back-to-back monk perspective. This section of the book was tedious, to be honest. Just knowing it’s there makes me reluctant to open the book. Interspacing it with other perspectives would have broken it up and thus remove the tediousness.

Russ says, ‘Jeez, what’s a bear doing here at this time of year.’ Jeez, what’s a question doing without a question mark?

 

There were a few instances where the plot was underwhelming because it wasn’t thought through well.

About Gwilanna, Zanna ‘now knows she’s related to her.’ How? Just because you have powers doesn’t mean you descend from a historical person who did. Her reasoning behind her assumption is faulty, a fact that doesn’t change whether she’s right or wrong.

David’s ice samples from the Arctic predict a massive rise in ice temperature in the coming weeks. But how can ice samples, which formed in the past, predict the future? The rise is because dragons are coming and there’s no way the ice would know that. Unless it’s the firetear reacting to dragons coming? This all needs serious clarification.

David clicks his fingers at Gwillan (this rudeness made me dislike David). Somehow Gwillan knows to put the lights on? It wasn’t in the conversation or part of the gesture or even implicit in the situation so how Gwillan knows is beyond me.

In the past, Arthur got an engagement ring for Liz. Yet the pair never did more than hold hands. The gap between the two seems like a massive leap.

Fain usually travel by thoughts so being inside a physical being is cumbersome. This is a nice detail. But if the Fain hated it so much, and they’d just change host after travelling anyway, why travel inside a body when you don’t need to?

At the end, the spirit of Ragnar comes when someone speaks about icefire in front of the tooth. Firstly, they’ve spoken about icefire in front of the tooth before so what’s so important about now? Secondly, at this point the tooth had sunk into the ocean so it wouldn’t be anywhere near them.

 

The amount of negative points I’ve noticed is upsetting. It’s unnerving that critiquing one of my favourite childhood series is lowering my opinion on them.

When Ingavar speaks to the shapeshifter, he says, ‘Nurr. Girl. Ingavar, how know?’ Ingavar doesn’t speak like this to anyone ever again. So it’s completely out of place.

When he’s excited, David presses ‘his fingertips together in excitement.’ Unless you’re an evil mastermind in a children’s cartoon, or you’re thinking, this pose is simply ridiculous.

David’s disappointed that there’s no native architecture in the town. Considering there aren’t many rocks or trees in the arctic, what exactly is he expecting ‘native architecture’ to be? Further, the architecture of colonised areas is often the style of the colonisers.

Liz says that Gretel was released. No. Gretel was given the items to escape.

After Lucy’s abducted, Liz tells David, ‘I want her back as much as you do.’ Considering she’s your daughter, I’d hope you’d want her back a lot more than David!

David’s jeans cost a lot more than Henry’s £30 trousers. But David is a poor student who’s always behind on rent!

When he was a child, Bernard stole sweets which is when he ‘turned away from righteousness... his parents.’ Surely that’s a little dramatic.

Lucy, waking up next to a polar bear after three months, notes the ‘stench of animal faeces.’ But bears eat dense material before they hibernate to block up their digestion tract. That is, they’re unable to defecate whilst hibernating. So if Lucy smelt faeces, it could only be her own.

Bonnington transforms into a tiger with sabre teeth. If it has sabre teeth it’s not a tiger.

 

There are two truly clever bits.

When a blizzard comes, ‘The blue sky turned by pieces to white.’

By using icefire (which animates), Bonnington’s cancer (which grows so is full of potential) and Golly (a healer), the dragons manage to bring Grockle out of stasis.

 

The addition of sci-fi elements (the Fain) felt almost out of place. The author did just enough to make it seem plausible but its place wasn’t as solid as it could have been. Still, its place in the world-building was interesting. To mix sci-fi and magic so boldly is rarely done so I have to give the author credit for that. The plot was lacking: once again world-building took precedence over plot rather than world-building driving the plot.

 

Critique: Icefire (Chris D’Lacey)

The plot is nice and simple. Its main purpose is to be the scaffolding on which the world building and character introductions rest upon.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There are a few plot points worth mentioning. Like the special dragons being alive (Gwyneth puts a spell on David to let him see and communicate with the dragons).

Some details are of particular importance later on in the series but are almost unnecessary towards this plot. Dr Bergstrom shows David a tornaq, a narwhal-tusk talisman of the Inuit. Plus the dragon Gawain died on an island called the Tooth of Ragnar. Bonnington drinks some of the melted icewater.

Liz keeps a snowball in the freezer. This is the icefire, used to animate her pottery dragons into special dragons.

When a dragon dies, it becomes clay to be one with the Earth and their fire tear returns to the Earth’s core. If a fire tear cannot return, the dragon becomes stone.

Aunty Gwyneth arrives with her potions dragon Gretel. Gretel is my favourite character in the entire series.

Zanna ‘quickens’ the egg which then glows. Inside is a human baby with a dragon tail. But Gwilanna makes it a dragon. Strangely, he (Grockle) is bronze when the rest of Liz-made dragons are green.

Guinevere was meant to give Gwillana (Gwyneth!) Gawain’s fire tear in exchange for a child made of clay, hair and scale, a child called Gwendolen. Instead Guinevere returned the tear to Gaia into the sea. The firetear became polar ice and this turned Guinevere’s friendly bear Thoran into the first polar bear.

 

There were a few good bits that really stood out.

To the Inuit, stories are like well-chewed bones, passed mouth to mouth so that the flavour is shared and remembered.

There were two descriptions in particular which really stood out. One was when a snowflake melts, it’s described as ‘the crystals turned to tears.’ The second was describing Liz’s sleep as ‘deeper than quicksand.’ Comparing sleep to something physical like quicksand was really creative.

The decision to use ‘Mizz’ instead of ‘Ms’ was clever considering the intended audience.

Zanna’s sister says that David has fifty-three seconds and ends with thirty-eight seconds, a difference of twenty-five seconds. I counted the gap and it was exactly twenty-five seconds.

 

As always there was a plethora of funny asides.

David asks Zanna if she shook Bergstrom’s talisman. Such a naughty joke for a children’s book. They’d just read it as an innocent question which just racks up the hilarity.

There are may one-liners. Zanna says a car is ‘more convenient than a broomstick’. David wonders if Aunty Gwyneth ‘might not be an aunty or a Gwyneth.’ Gretel covers a no smoking sign with ash. David says he needs to ‘save Henry’s bacon’ which had me laughing because Henry’s surname is ‘Bacon’.

When Liz tells David to go to his room, he says he’s not a little boy, shoves Lucy and stomps to his room. So he acts like a little boy. That was funny.

At the publishing house, Dilys asks if geography is about maps and contours. Then it says David was ‘mapping the contours of her swinging hips.’

David sings loudly out of tune because he’s in love, Liz explains to Lucy. Her daughter declares ”I wish he’d be in love in tune.”’ This is my favourite line from the book and is the first thing I remember when I see or hear about this series.

 

There were a few issues that should have been cleaned up by the editors.

            For example, one paragraph was a page and a half long. This length is too far for books aimed at any age, let alone children. Then there’s one unusually large chapter at twenty-five pages. None of the other chapters even approach this size so it just felt inconsistent.

A semi-colon is used in a really bizarre way when David thinks, ‘But she was; very funny.’ There’s no grammatical reason for the semi-colon to be there. In actual fact, there’s no grammatical reason for any punctuation mark to be there.

In the same paragraph, have “David speech.” David prose. “Lucy speech.”

Something weird happen to the punctuation when Liz tells Lucy to ‘stop calling… Zanna, was it? a witch.’ It makes no sense. The ellipses should be replaced with a dash and the another dash should be put after the question mark to close the clause.

 

It’s almost unbelievable how many plot errors occurred. Unfortunately these mistakes lowered my affection towards this story.

Liz hoots only to have David hoot two pages later. If you’re going to use the same action, at least spread it out a bit more. The only time this closeness could be tolerated is if the same word was used to indicate a parallel but that’s not the case here.

David only pays attention to Zanna calling him handsome the second time. He didn’t even react a tiny bit to the first time.

David’s convinced that there ‘had to be’ a connection between dragons, bears and Gawain’s hidden firetear. He doesn’t have enough information to even suspect this, let alone be convinced by it.

Gwilanna spells David to see and speak with dragons. Yet, David’s confused that Zanna knows about the egg. Why would Gwilanna’s spell remove all the memories about Zanna and the egg?

When the icefire snowball melts, the dragons are out of action. All accept G’reth because he was made without the icefire. But icefire is the thing that animates the dragons so if Golly didn’t have any, how could he be animated?

David thinks Gretel’s inviting him to sniff her flowers, so he does. Even though he suspects Aunty Gwyneth of being bad so why would he do what her dragon wanted?

Zanna kisses David, even though he’s said plenty of times that he has a girlfriend. He wonders if he two-timed Sophie but considering he didn’t initiate the kiss I don’t know why he’d even wonder this.

Before David moves next door, David puts Gadzooks in the cupboard. Last time he moved Gadzooks from the window, the dragon cried his fire tear. Why would he risk that again?

Zanna says, ‘A white albino.’ Being white is literally the very thing that makes something an albino.

They had one hour until Gwilanna would do something awful. A short conversation later on they only have thirteen minutes left!

            David almost kills Gwilanna. This came out of the blue. I know she tried to kill him but wanting to kill is an extreme reaction from someone who’s so far shown no violent tendencies.

            Liz prevents David from killing Gwilanna because Liz and her descendants require Gwilanna to reproduce. Considering Zanna quickened the egg, Gwilanna isn’t necessary to Liz anymore.

The polar bear Lorel tries to prove that he’s fierce, ‘not a simple-minded Teller of Ways.’ Lorel has an amazing memory and logical reasoning so that’s hardly simple-minded. Plus simply acting fierce makes one appear like they have no intelligence. That is, simple-minded.

David tells Gretel to tell Zanna that he wasn’t two-timing her. But David mentioned more than once that he was with Sophie, meaning David and Zanna were never a thing. They were only a thing when they kissed and that counted towards David two-timing Sophie, not Zanna.

Bergstrom set the essay that was due that Friday yet David did his at the weekend?

In the first book, there were distinct references to Grace not being a special dragon. Yet in this book onwards, Gretel is a special dragon. This is a glaring inconsistency.

 

How did the fire tear become ice? It’s never stated which is such a disappointment considering it’s so central to both plot and worldbuilding. My theory? Fire is in water, so when Gawain became stone, i.e. solid, his firetear became solid, and solid water is ice.

 

In this book, we see a massive amount of world building and character introductions. It provides most of the information needed to understand the plot in future books. Whilst this is always interesting, it did at times feel like an information dump. This book is the stepping stone between the first book, with hints of magic, and a world firmly set with magic.